To Those We Found follows an alien that is sent to a world similar to Earth to investigate and report back, what he finds is corruption, greed, and a disregard for each other. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?

The main inspiration for the book came to me during a trip to the desert country of Morocco. I was intrigued by the language and culture of the local tribes. The Berber aka. Amazigh people. The sound and the strange geometrical symbols of their language really made me feel as if I was on a completely different world. I’ve even used their language for some of the character names and significant places/things in the book.

Did you create an outline for the characters in the story before you started writing or did the character’s personalities grow organically as you were writing?

Before I even wrote a single word, I first took one year to research everything that I could need to craft the world of the book. Apart from astrophysics, orbital mechanics, engineering, and biology the topics ranged from economics to psychology, philosophy and religion. I wasn’t aiming to create a believable world, to me, it had to be real. But simultaneously characters came into my mind that could populate the world. Some were inspired by people I know from everyday life, but there also other, larger than life people that influenced my characters. Stars like Freddie Mercury and David Bowie were one of the most dominant figures to draw from. While writing the main character Taman Yedder I even imagined an alien version of David Bowie. But personality wise, there’s a lot of me in it of course.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

One of the main themes that were driving my story was the concept of truth. In our world, there seems to be an infinite number of truths, depending on what line of evidence or philosophy you follow or the political stance you take. I think that aspect played a large part in the way I designed the world characters and plot of the story.

The second theme is the idea or perception of foreign-/alienness. That’s why for example I chose my main character to be gay. Because the experience is alien to me, and I wanted to explore it, understand it. Also, the world as a whole was designed to feel real, relatable, but also strange and alien at the same time. In a way, it’s a queer mirage of our own world, populated with beings that are shockingly like us in some ways and in others not.

Just imagine staring into a telescope and discovering beings that seem to be an alien version of you.

What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?

Writing this book has been incredibly exhausting, mentally, physically and financially. I had a strict writing regime. I’ve forced myself to write every single day and on weekends, even if I absolutely did not want to. I literally had two full-time jobs during that writing period.

I was also aware, with English not being my first language, that I couldn’t possibly finish the project on my own. So I’ve hired professional editors who worked in the publishing industry, to make sure is up to standard.

Originally I’ve planned this book to be its own thing. But as time went by, I felt that I definitely want to continue the story as there were so many ideas that I couldn’t possibly put into one book. When that is going to happen however, I can not say at the moment. As it’s nearly impossible to sell enough books this day to be profitable. It’s always a losing game for most indie authors.

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